Look before you leap

[catalyst2]

If the snake in the library wasn't enough, now it is a croc in the pool! Not my pool, fortunately, but a public pool in Darwin. Admittedly Darwin is about 4 200 km from where I am now but, in my book, not even that distance is enough!

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[tijnat.livejournal.com]

I live not quite in the heart of downtown and besides the usual birds, mice, voles and squirrels, some of which occasionally find there way into my apartment courtesy of my cats (not squirrels), we have skunks, raccoons and coyotes living in the area. I haven't had any of the latter enter my place, although I once looked out my bedroom window and was face to face with a raccoon peering in the window.

We also have bald eagles nesting in the park where I work. One of the eagles captured a seagull one Sunday morning and sat on top of our building shredding it to bits, while feathers drifted down on to our customers!! I was just glad I wasn't there to see it.

[catalyst2.livejournal.com]

We do get lots of roos around, only Western greys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Grey_Kangaroo) so not very big or exotic but nice to watch. Lots of lizards, bobtails (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stump-tailed_skink) especially but what I am most impressed by is a nearby colony of Yellow-billed spoonbills (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow-billed_Spoonbill), not so much because of what they are but that I have watched the colony grow from 3-4 windblown strays about 8 years ago to a permanent colony with about 20-25 breeding pairs.

Within a short distance there is a breeding pair of Ospreys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osprey) who have one young in the nest right now and a nesting pair of Whistling Kites (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistling_Kite) who have raised at least one chick to maturity every year since 1994!